Page 66 of Broken Daddy

Asking her is a facade. The moment she told me the date and time, I had it memorized. I notified Trudy immediately that I wouldn’t be in until noon today.

Gen nods, her lighthearted expression dropping slightly at the change in my demeanor.

“Let me shower and get Eva up. We’ll drop her off on the way.”

* * *

Once Eva’sout of the car and running toward the group of ten-year-olds at the library, I let out a forceful exhale.

“Um…are you okay?”

Somehow, I forgot Gen was in the car. Ridiculous, since the whole reason I have the morning off is to accompany her to the appointment.

I nod. “Yeah, sorry. Just juggling a lot right now.”

She pulls her knees up in the passenger seat. A protective stance.

“You don’t have to do this, you know. You can just drop me off.”

Looking at her with a frown, I state, “Iwantto come, Gen. I didn’t sleep well last night. And I have some tough decisions to make this week.”

My own PR team is still falling apart at the seams.

I might need to take Jenson up on his offer.

Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Gen chewing her lip again. Maybe the doc today will tell her to stop doing that. It drives me crazy for a variety of reasons.

“Did you…ever want to have another kid?”

Pulling up to the corner, I turn and stare at her. “Are you asking me if I want this baby?” How can she even doubt that?

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, Eva is amazing, obviously, but if your wife hadn’t passed away…”

My heart aches at the thought of Julia. I remember right after she passed, it felt like heartbreak was literal. As though every day the muscle in my chest was contracting too much, shriveling down to nothing, wearing itself away.

“Yes. Julia and I planned to have at least one more, but then the accident happened.”

Gen looks stricken. I know she knows about my wife, but we haven’t talked directly about what happened. Not like this.

Taking a deep breath, I dive in. She might as well know; we’re going to have a child together, after all.

“Julia owned and operated a home staging company. She was good at it, really good. But she insisted on working alone a lot of the time. Especially on last-minute clients. She was in a townhouse in the city, carrying something upstairs—I can’t remember what—and she tripped and fell. Hit her head. They said she was knocked out immediately, and then the blood loss happened quickly.”

Gen gasps, a hand to her mouth. My throat feels tight, swollen, so I try to swallow.

“The townhouse was empty, of course. No one found her until…until I got home later that night and called the police. By then it had been…”

Hours. Almost seven hours. I was always home late those days. The nanny had picked Eva up from preschool and I was probably heading some project, and the whole time Julia was a few miles away from Ironside, bleeding out on someone’s parquet floors.

There are no more words. The car is silent as I take the last few turns to the OB-GYN office.

After parking in the monstrosity of a garage connected to the building, I watch Gen carefully as she gets out of the car. I can’t help it, even though she’s not showing yet, I still feel protective toward her and this baby.

We take the elevator to the second floor, check in, and the receptionist greets us as “mom and dad.” Gen’s face reddens; mine is blank. She must realize she’s made us uncomfortable because she stutters as I take the clipboard and turn my back on her.

“You okay to do this?” I keep my voice low so as not to startle Gen, tilting the clipboard toward her once we’re sitting down. She nods and takes it gently.

As she reads and jots down answers, I realize just how much I don’t know about her. It hits me all over again that she and Russell grew up mostly in foster care, and they were separated for a long time. The last two years of high school for Russ and I, they managed to be taken in by the same family—which wasn’t always the case. Then Russ graduated and decided to make it on his own in the city.

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